


Lost Things

by morenewsfromnowhere



Category: Creature Court Trilogy - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Genre: F/F, mild horror elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28148025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morenewsfromnowhere/pseuds/morenewsfromnowhere
Summary: ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ Kelpie says abruptly. ‘I’m not interested in prophecies or signs. I’m well out of that game. Go bother someone else.’
Relationships: Isangell/Kelpie
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Lost Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shopfront](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/gifts).



**Four days after the Kalends of Felicitas, noon**

Gulls circle overhead in the burning clear sky, wheeling to descend on the boat pulled up to the dock. A woman with dark hair pulled back in a tight bun glances up at the birds as she steps briskly across Marius Bridge, threading through the traffic of carts and cargo, sailors, apprentices sent down to fetch the day’s supplies of fruit, flowers, grain. All she carries is a crumpled pieces of paper.

_There’s a place for you here, Kelpie. We’re building things here, with our own hands, and no power and majesty or lords or anyone to tell us what to do. The lads and lassies on the docks voted for me as the union representative on the commune board, and the roses still keep flowering._

_I know I shouldn’t be asking this of you – it’s your choice to stay – but when all you can tell me if that you’re a decoration in a gilded cage, well. You know me. I worry._

_Send word back, or come yourself. There’s always a place for you with me._

She traces her way through narrow streets, moving through the city as a fish through coral, currents pulling onwards.

The shadows are their noontime shortest when she pauses by the fountain in the middle of a small square. The stone edging is chipped, and the carvings encircling the central vasque so worn by water and time that whatever figures were there have been reduced to a formless, slippery protrusions. A child is carrying away a filled bucket, entering into the doorway of one of the towering, ramshackle buildings.

She sits down to perch on the edge of the basin, reaching a hand down into the water. The sun burns hot but the water is chill and smooth, like the finest silk on her hand. She shuts her eyes for a moment, words echoing in her head as though she could hear Macready speaking them next to her.

_A place for you here_

_No power and majesty or lords or anyone_

_Or anyone_

She blinks her eyes open at the sound of a different voice, crackled and harsh.

‘They are stirring in the deep.’

The beating light blinds her, leaving her vision swimming in flashes of reds and golds.

‘What?’ she asked, startled.

‘They will return for what they have lost. They are stirring in the deep,’ the voice repeats, growing louder – closer – and more insistent.

She looks down, blinking her eyes clear, and though she can now see her hand still immersed in the fountain, the red remains, a deep crimson staining the water.

‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ she says abruptly. ‘I’m not interested in prophecies or signs. I’m well out of that game. Go bother someone else.’

The old woman cackles. ‘Well out, she says! You’re never out. You’ll never leave.’ She continues, unrelenting, chanting out, ‘They will return for what they have lost. They are stirring in the deep. They will return for what they have lost. They are stirring in the deep. They will return for what they have lost.’

A more than human sounds seems to emerge with her voice: a low, buzzing drone, and an achingly high melody, swirling upwards to hold, piercingly before rushing onward.

Kelpie stands, pushing the woman back with one hand. She shouts back as she strides across the cobblestones, leaving the square behind.

‘I’m not lost. I know where I am going.’

**Four days after the Kalends of Felicitas, afternoon**

‘Another drink, high and brightness?’ questions a servant. Isangell, momentarily free of conversation partners, smiles appreciatively.

‘Yes, thank you. A glass of’ – she glances at her mother, seated close to the window raising a thin porcelain tea cup to her lips – ‘pêchette.’

The reception room is pleasantly crowded, sufficient numbers that Isangell can maneuver through the room while retaining a plausible distance from her mother. The genteel hubbub of conversation, interspersed with tinklingly fashionable laughter and occasionally pauses that allow the string quartet’s spritely accompaniment to sound through, fills the space with energy that Isangell can almost touch, shape. The first major diplomatic reception of the season, and she feels comfortable here in a way she could not have imagined as a gawky child in the shadow of her grandmother, nor in that first awkward mourning-bound year of her ascension, or the chaos of puzzled loss and rebuilding that had followed the ending of the skywar. The spring green colouring and the elegant arching metal frames holding the mirrors and windows of the elegant room are a far cry from the ruin she had crawled through a little more than a year ago.

As the servant nods and retreats, a pair of men dressed in the latest Orcadian fashion of closely tailored suits move closer.

‘High and brightness,’ spoken more at her hand than herself as the older of the two men bows over it, ‘may I present my brother, George. He arrived in Aufleur only yesterday, but I’m sure he will be staying for some time to come.’

George makes his bow, flipping his overly long dark hair out of his eyes in a practiced gesture. ‘Charmed,’ he effuses. ‘A charming city, and a charming duchess.’

‘Lord George,’ she greets him politely. ‘And Baron Howard. I’ve barely seen you since you returned from Inglirra. I hope both of you enjoyed your travels as well as your return to Aufleur.’

‘Oh, but how can one think of the journey, when this! this! is the destination. The city of saints and angels, of the musette and myths!’ Lord George proclaims.

‘Indeed,’ chimes in his brother more dryly, ‘it is a delight to return and to bear the best wishes of their Majesties to you. The journey was tolerable, though I must say the railway through COUNTRY seems somewhat old-fashioned in its speed and accommodations.’

A platter with a flute of pêchette Is held up beside her. Taking the glass, she gestures back a salute of equal to equal. ‘Do return my best wishes to their Majesties. I hope that we can continue to build the friendship between our countries. Perhaps,’ and the accompanying smile is her most poised and polished, ‘this might extend to an interest in our railways? As you’ve said, they are not the most modern of networks.’

Baron Howard’s smile – and deflection - is equally professional. ‘So many things for us to discuss.’

Dammit, he’d given her that opening and she needed support for the railways upgrades. Without Bazeppe at the end of the main line, commercial investment in the railways was minimal, barely enough to keep it functional. Inglirrean engineers and Inglirrean money could means opportunities that her city was desperately lacking.

He smoothly redirects the conversation. ‘Did you know my brother is a poet, high and brightness? I don’t think his work has been published here – though some of the newspapers may have carried it.’

‘How charming,’ she returns serve.

Lord George leans inward, confidingly. ‘And yet I have written nothing for the past year. The Muse has deserted me! Perhaps being here’, and his sweeping arm metaphorically includes the whole city and almost smacks a passing Atulian merchant in the face, ‘will call her back to me.’

If the way to an Inglirrean connection is through this poet, then that’s what she has to work with.

‘You mentioned the musette, Lord George. Do you enjoy the performances? Perhaps this could be a source of inspiration.’

‘Oh, how I adore the musette. Can’t keep me away! I’ll even drag Freddie along when I can.’

‘I have a box at the Pearl,’ she says, not mentioning that this choice had been yet another one of the bitterly argued assertions of independence over her mother. ‘I was thinking of going tomorrow night to see the latest show with some close friends. You would be most welcome to come, and Lord Howard, of course.

He looks like a child given a whole bowl of sugared almonds.

‘Oh, but we must! The Pearl! Your kindness…’

‘A pleasure almost beyond words, high and brightness,’ Baron Howard says. ‘How could we refuse?’

‘Then I will be pleased to see you there.’ She replies, turning slightly with her practiced smile to welcome in the ambassador from Tunis who is waiting politely close by.

She has moved on to greet the representatives from Nova Stella when she glances up to see Kelpie: the woman is waiting, framed in the door to the servant’s hallways. She’s in her street clothes – that’s right, she had been planning to go to the docks to see if there was any message from Macready – and her face is stiff, guarded. Isangell tilts her head, wordlessly querying. A thin smile breaks on Kelpie’s lips, a skeptical eyebrow raised to covey her opinion of such social events, and a flick of her eyes that means she’ll tell Isangell about it later. Nothing to worry about then. She returns her focus to the group around her.

‘I hear that the rains have been kind to the chocolat farmers’, she says.

**Four days after the Kalends of Felicitas, nox**

Kelpie is waiting in Isangell’s rooms when she finally makes her way free from her secretary, planning out the next few weeks to build on the developments from the reception. Kelpie has never been patient with the waiting that being part of Isnagell’s life entail, but tonight she is stretched out of the chaise longue, boots on the damask fabric, and reading the latest Evander X novel.

Isangell perches on the chaise next to her, pulling off her high heeled shoes with a sigh of relief.

‘Did you get any word from Macready? Is he getting ready to lead the revol-‘ Isangell begins, but Kelpie sits up and places her hand gently on Isangell’s cheek, leaning to place her lips on Isangell’s. Softly but firmly, she licks into Isangell’s mouth, sweetness and heat and Isangell’s spine melts as her body curves into Kelpie. Kelpie sinks back down, fingers pushed through Isangell’s bobbed hair to cradle her head, to pull her down. Time seems to slow, the world distilled down to skin and breath.

Isangell pulls back from the kiss, taking a moment to flick open the buttons of Kelpie’s shirt before her lips start tracing a pathway down, seeking out her taste, and when Kelpie comes, it is on a tide like the far off pull of the seas.

**Five days after the Kalends of Felicitas, nox**

The Pearl shines now, the novelty of neon lights blazing in the twilight in washes of blue and gold. Kelpie stands, spine rigid and face blank, providing the burnish of lictorial presence as Isangell and the gaggle following her alight from the cab. The neon lights catch on the shimmering fall of the angles and folds of yet another one of Isangell’s dresses overshadowing the fainter glimmer on the silver treads twined along piping at the seams of her uniform, and Kelpie is never sure whether Velody included that in the design as remembrance or reproach.

Isangell is about to lead the group into the foyer when a man in an old-fashioned bowler hat and suit comes up the street, almost at a run. He’s accompanied by Isangell’s secretary, who nods to Kelpie – this is, if next expected, at least approved.

Isangell gestures to the others to go ahead into the theatre, and Kelpie moves to interpose herself between Isnagell and the other audience members arriving, giving some small space of privacy.

‘The Dock-Master, high and brightness,’ gasps the secretary.

She had seen him last at the festival of Neptunalia, as Isangell launched the tiny carved pieces of wood that stood in for the daily traffic of cargo shuffling up and down the Verticordia to the seaport, carrying along the currents with the hopes of prosperity and safe travel. As with every ritual now, Kelpie watches from the side, seeing the stretches and patches of faith that she must believe still holds the city together.

Isangell offers a small kindness, breaking the silence for him.

‘You have some bad news for me, I think.’

‘Yes.’ He breathes heavily. ‘The shoals have sifted. The deep channel is no longer safe and, well, we have pilot ships out, but no sign of a safe way through to the seaport. We won’t see anything larger than a dinghy reach to docks.

‘This has happened before, surely. The river changes, I am told, but it has never abandoned us.’

‘Not in my time,’ he says. ‘There’s records of dredging, yes, but back more than fifty years, and the old Duc… He didn’t see the point of maintaining the dredging barges when we weren’t using them. They rusted out more than ten years ago, now.’

Isangell takes a deep breath. Aufleur will manage on limited traffic for a few days, and road transport can fill some of the gaps, but that won’t… Her mind circles relentlessly. The deep channel gone. Saints and angels. 

‘Do you think there is any chance that the river itself will clear out the shoals – that the channel will re-emerge?’ she asks.

‘The river makes its own ways, in its own time,’ the Dock-Master replies. ‘We can’t rush it, and there’s no way of knowing any further changes until we get some light. I can’t send my crew out at night when they can’t rely on the channel markers.’

“I’m sure we can find a solution. Come to the Palazzo at eight tomorrow morning. Report on any further news from the pilots then.’

She pastes on her smile more firmly, nods in dismissal, and turns towards the foyer, Kelpie falling in step behind.. The Inglirreans may be one of the few options left – arrange for the hire of dredging barges from their canal system, bring them in tow on a steam ship, two weeks, maybe more – The newspapers shouldn’t pick it up till morning, most likely, but once the news does get out – there’s Agonalia in two days’ time, and the floristers will be awaiting supplies – perhaps Aunt Augusta could send some additional grain from the Diamagne to keep the bakers supplied –

It’s a relief that the music has already begun as she enters the box, spared from small talk and sideways questions about the urgent news from Baron Howard. Nonetheless, she positions herself at Howard’s side, close enough to hear Lord George twitter his way through the first chorus number and the comedy act and Topaz’s husky reimaginging of an old Floralia song, the thumping syncopation of the bass drum reverberating like a heart beat slightly out of true.

Even Lord George falls silent when the Orphan Princel takes the stage. Kelpie, for all she detests being dragged back into the Pearl and its traces of the Creature Court, is hypnotized as a single spotlight picks out the thin figure at the back of the stage. His costume looks like a sharp, modern suit at the shoulders, but begins to disintegrate below, into long, drifting, dark ribbons that twist and cling around him like water weeds as he slowly advances

Forward. High above, another spotlight catches the troop of child tumbler beginning to unfurl themselves from long, deep blue curtains, emerging as though from a cocoon.

The song begins with a low, buzzing drone, and when the tumblers being to swing, moving high above the stage, jumping across from curtain to curtain while a a single woodwind begins to trace the moldy, high and floating, Isangell hears Kelpie’s sharp intake of breath.

It’s an old song – Isangell would swear she remembers her nurse singing it to her as a lullaby – but like all the Princel’s songs unsettles, pulling memory towards nightmare. He seems to look up directly at her, singing his forlorn song of lost love, while the tumblers throw themselves higher and higher, grasping the dangling drapes of fabric, hands reaching, catching, holding for a moment in the burn of the spotlight before spinning on.

_Hold her down, down. The deep below, the water flows, the iron gate, the slippery stone. Down, take her down._

Isangell smells damp, musty and old. The air is chilled, and the lights on stage now flicker and surge, like looking up at the sun from underwater. Just as Isangell rises, about to stand next to Kelpie, the Princel’s open mouth gushes out a flood a liquid. Under the strange lights, it looks dark, almost like blood.

There are screams and shrieks from the pit and the boxes around. Lord George goes to bolt for the door.

Kelpie moves quickly to stand in his way, holding the door shut.

‘Move, woman!’

‘You are all staying here,’ she says flatly. ‘There’s more danger to you from a crush on the stairs that there is in whatever mess is going on down there.’ She stares out, challenging them all to try moving. Isangell returns Kelpie’s gaze steadily.

‘My personal lictor knows what she is doing, Lord George.’

The tense silence in the box is broken by a push on the door from the outside. Livillia storms in, heading directly to Isangell. Liviliia slams the small boat into her stomach. A child’s toy? No, it’s one of the ritual offerings she had launched back for Neptunalia.

Isangell can feel marks cut into the curved sides. Her fingers and eyes trace out: _return the lost_

Livilia’s eyes are sharp. ‘This isn’t the Creature Court,’ she hisses. ‘This is not our doing. It’s your city now. You defend it. Keep my people out of it. We’ve bleed and died enough for this place.’

She stalks out, not acknowledging Kelpie as she brushes by

Isangell holds out the boat, mutely. Kelpie stands stiffly, making no move to take it.

Isangell steps forward, close in to Kelpie and says in a low voice. ‘We need to find out what is going on. Perhaps the Library?’

‘I believe it is safe to leave now.’ Kelpie announces, not looking at Isangell. ‘Follow me. I’ll have the squad summoned to see you all safely home.

It’s only later, guests disposed of and four lictors escorting the cab while she and Kelpie ride inside, that Isangell pulls out the boat again.

‘Don’t you see? It’s one of my Neptunalia offerings. The Palazzo Library must have something on this. If we can find out –’

‘This isn’t yours to find out.’

‘What? Kelpie, obviously there’s a connection with the changes in the river. I can’t not do something here. The city needs us.’

‘The city needs you. It needs you, Isangell, it needs your mind, and your heart, and your offerings.’

‘We do this together, Kelpie.’

Kelpie raps on the the side of the cab, and obediently, it slows and stops.

‘I can’t do this again,’ Kelpie states. ‘I’ve been to war for this city, and I’ve betrayed my friends, and I’ve burnt my loyalty, and I’ve bleed and frigged and lost. I cannot fight this city again.’

She steps out.

‘Go back to the Palazzo, high and brightness,’ she orders, voice echoing in the empty street, and strides away. Isangell will not stop watching her, through eyes burning with tears, and she can’t se sure if Kelpie glances back or the blur of tears is deceiving her.

**Five days after the Kalends of Felicitas, later that nox**

She is standing above the grating where the canal flows out of the Verticordia into the Arches. Despite the chill in the knight air, her lictor’s jacket hangs open, unbuttoned.as she leans against the stone parapet.

Isangell walks hesitantly up, not trying to hide her footsteps. She leans against the stone as well, glancing at the dark water below.

Kelpie can feel her warmth in the aching gap between their arms.

‘This is the place of lost things,’ Kelpie says, quietly, looking out and down into the swirling confusion of currents. ‘The ribbons below – on the iron grating – people tie them there to call back what they realized they should have kept. I’ve heard parents threaten their children – to send them through the lost gate = and always thought that that seemed a far gentler thing than what really lay below the city – the Court and the fighting. I imagined that they might just drift to somewhere else, somewhere far away.’

‘They found me here, you know. Macready told me the story once – off his face drunk and I don’t know if he still remembers or if he even told the truth. He’d just been made Sentinel, he said, when one night they saw me here – in the water, clinging to the bars. I wasn’t calling or anything – it was only because one of Priest’s courtesoi had been hit and thrown into the river that they even noticed me. I didn’t speak for months after, he said. Never told them my name. I would have been eight, ten maybe.’

‘Macready called me Kelpie – some water creature or something in the Isles – and it stuck. I still can’t remember my real name – anything really – but… What if I’m the lost thing? What if I’m the offering the city wants? What more can it take?’

‘You were found,’ Isangell insists.

‘You are found now,’ another voice breaks in, a figure emerging from the water and it might be the old woman from the fountain but for the water but the tumbling water cascading ceaselessly over the figure renders it smoothed, almost formless.

‘Come down, child, lost one. Come down past the iron gate, to the deep below. The water flows. The water calls back its own.’

Kelpie reaches one hand out towards the figure, but her eyes are locked on Isangell.

‘I never thought I belonged here, in the palazzo, in the daylight. But Isangell, know that I belonged to you.’

The water starts to stream over Kelpie’s hand, merging her together with the watery figure.

_The deep below, the water flows, the iron gate, the slippery stone_

‘No!’ Isangell shouts. She steps forward, her hand pushing into the tumbling water surrounding the figure.

‘I chose you,’ Isangell says fiercely. ‘I chose you, and I will keep choosing you, and I will not decide between you and this city because you are mine.’

‘How can I be yours?’ Kelpie asks at the same time that the figure laughs.

‘I go far deeper than you, sunlight duchess. You and your little confection of a city, insisting that you still have a claim on this place – still have any ground to claim,’ it grinds out.

‘No,’ says Isangell again. ‘We build this city, every day. We build it in song, and we build it in our work, and we build it every time we hold each other. Kelpie, please.’

And there’s a high, bright melody in Kelpie’s ears, and bursts of light in her eyes and the water is tumbling further and further over her face, the slippery stone, the deep below, and in a final blind reaching out she clasps Isangell’s hand and the warmth there pulls her out.

With Isangell at her side, she can step back from the figure. ’I’m not lost,’ she manages to say. ‘I have been found and chosen and I belong to the daylight and the sunlight and you have no power over me.’

She throws a ribbon, the piping torn from her jacket. ‘Here is your offering. Here is your lost ting. Now go.’

The water starts to subside, and their clasped hands are still holding tightly when the sun begins to rise.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the excuse to play around in the Creature Court world - it's such a delicious mash up that also has moments of incongruity that occasionally make you step back and ask how this world will actually function. The starting point of this fic was tryong to figure out the economics of a faux-italian peninsula with only three major cities, two of which disappear at some point, no history of empire, and wondering about Kelpie's name.
> 
> I hope you enjoy, Merry Yuletide!


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